If you haven’t yet read Matt Taibbi’s latest article for Rolling Stone magazine then you really should – it’s fantastic. Take, for example, this great line: “There is nobody anywhere growing weed strong enough to help the human mind grasp the enormity of this crime.”

It’s worth pointing out though – in case you are unfamiliar with his oeuvre and are wondering – that the heinous crime Taibbi describes thus is not genocide or child abuse or rape. No, it’s Libor-rigging.

Now let me say straight away – I’ve said it before and I’m more than happy to say it many, many, many times again – the manipulation of Libor for personal or institutional gain is indefensible.

Libor and its companion interest rates were among the main foundations of the global financial industry. They were rotten. And they didn’t rot of their own accord; they were attacked by maggots. The traders that conspired with each other to fiddle the rates are beneath contempt. I think that there is a very strong case that they should be jailed; it is right and proper for the banks that failed to keep them in check to be punished.

But – and I’m just going to put this out there – as great a journalist as Taibbi is, and as fine a turner of phrases as the quoted sentence proves him to be, is it just possible that he’s allowed himself to wander ever so briefly into the realm of hyperbole?

Is interest rate manipulation really too enormous a crime for the human brain to comprehend? Does it even come close to justifying that description? Is it not a little disrespectful to the victims of other, somewhat worse, crimes to suggest that it is?

I am sure Taibbi has met a few real-life investment bankers. Has he not spotted that most of them don’t actually have horns growing out of the foreheads and don’t always snack on human babies for lunch?

The Rolling Stone journalist also wrote: “It’s a conspiracy so massive that the lawyers who are suing the banks are having an extremely difficult time figuring out how to calculate the damage.”

Really? Are the lawyers having such a tough time (poor lambs) because the crime is too big to compute? Or is it because the damage is too small to identify? After all, the Financial Services Authority itself said: “The direct impact of actual manipulation of the Libor fix on UK retail consumers is likely to be minimal.”

That’s not to say people won’t have suffered because of Libor manipulation. But as yet, very few have made themselves known so it’s unlikely anyone is hurting too badly.

The trouble with this kind spittle-flecked media hysteria (of which Taibbi is among the most artful proponents) is that it drowns out sensible debate. In fact, there is much in Taibbi’s article with which I agree – including his central assertion that banks have become “too big to jail” because doing so would pose huge systemic risks. This a problem and needs to be dealt with.

Unfortunately, I think his hyperbole will play best with the people who already agree with him, while simultaneously making it much less likely that the people who need to be persuaded will pay his article any attention.